Suppose that to schedule a desired service to be performed, a customer calls a service organization to place an order for the desired service. The customer may be kept on the phone for an undesirably long period of time while the service organization searches the schedule in an attempt to fit the order into the schedule. To avoid annoying the customer, some service organizations do not search the schedule while the customer is on the phone, but simply accept the order and dump it into a time bucket without scheduling the order to a particular shift of a worker. The night before the order is to be performed, the service organization executes a batch process that assigns orders to various workers.
The approach as described above limits the ability of a customer to specify his preferences in regard to when and how the order is to be performed. The customer is unable to select a desired appointment window or a desired worker with a set of desired skills. As the expectations of customers have increased over time, scheduling systems that fail to meet increased customer expectations may result in customer dissatisfaction and lead to the eventual lack of acceptance in the marketplace. Thus, what is needed are systems and methods for enhancing the scheduling process that allow customers' increased expectations to be met.